The Imperialist eBook

“Oh, the other’s of course the awful poverty—­the
twelve millions that haven’t got enough to do
with. I expect it’s an outside figure and
it covers all sorts of qualifying circumstances; but
it’s the one the Free Fooders quote, and it’s
the one Wallingham will have to handle. They’ve
muddled along until they’ve got twelve million
people in that condition, and now they have to carry
on with the handicap. We ask them to put a tax
on foreign food to develop our wheat areas and cattle
ranges. We say, ’Give us a chance and we’ll
feed you and take your surplus population.’
What is to be done with the twelve million while we
are growing the wheat? The colonies offer to
create prosperity for everybody concerned at a certain
outlay—­we’ve got the raw materials—­and
they can’t afford the investment because of
the twelve millions, and what may happen meanwhile.
They can’t face the meanwhile—­that’s
what it comes to.”

“Fine old crop of catchwords in that situation,”
Mr Williams remarked; and his eye had the spark of
the practical politician. “Can’t
you hear ’em at it, eh?”

“It scares them out of everything but hand-to-mouth
politics. Any other remedy is too heroic.
They go on pointing out and contemplating and grieving,
with their percentages of misery and degeneration;
and they go on poulticing the cancer with benevolence—­there
are people over there who want the State to feed the
schoolchildren! Oh, they’re kind, good,
big-hearted people; and they’ve got the idea
that if they can only give enough away everything
will come right. I was talking with a man one
day, and I asked him whether the existence of any class
justified governing a great country on the principle
of an almshouse. He asked me who the almsgivers
ought to be, in any country. Of course it was
tampering with my figure—­in an almshouse
there aren’t any; but that’s the way it
presents itself to the best of them. Another fellow
was frantic at the idea of a tax on foreign food—­he
nearly cried—­but would be very glad to see
the Government do more to assist emigration to the
colonies. I tried to show him it would be better
to make it profitable to emigrate first, but I couldn’t
make him see it.

“Oh, and there’s the old thing against
them, of course—­ the handling of imperial
and local affairs by one body. Anybody’s
good enough to attend to the Baghdad Railway, and
nobody’s too good to attend to the town pump.
Is it any wonder the Germans beat them in their own
shops and Russia walks into Thibet? The eternal
marvel is that they stand where they do.”

“At the top,” said Mr Williams.

“Oh—­at the top! Think of what
you mean when you say ‘England.’”

“I see that the demand for a tariff on manufactured
goods is growing,” Williams remarked, “even
the anti-food-tax organs are beginning to shout for
that.”

“If they had put it on twenty years ago,”
said Lorne, “there would be no twelve million
people making a problem for want of work. and it would
be a good deal easier to do imperial business today.”